Friday 19 March 2010 13.55 EDT
First published on Friday 19 March 2010 13.55 EDT

The director of public prosecutions announced todaythat the son of the conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife, Joan, will not be prosecuted for helping the couple to kill themselves even though there is sufficient evidence.

In the DPP's first decision since he issued revised guidelines last month on when cases of assisting suicide may be prosecuted, Keir Starmer said that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute Caractacus Downes.

The decision was made despite evidence that Downes, 42, had booked the couple a hotel room in Switzerland and accompanied them on their final journey, knowing what they were planning to do, and that he stood to gain financially from their deaths last July.

Prosecution would have been under the 1961 Suicide Act. Although suicide itself is no longer an offence, encouraging or assisting it is if that action takes place in England or Wales, regardless of where the suicide takes place.

Starmer said: "Having decided there is sufficient evidence to charge Mr Downes, it has been necessary to consider whether a prosecution is required in the public interest.

"The factor tending in favour of prosecution is that it is clear that both Sir Edward and Lady Downes were able to book the hotel room themselves and that, nevertheless, Mr Downes undertook that act. However, the available evidence indicates that Mr Downes's parents had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision to take their own lives and in assisting them, Mr Downes was wholly motivated by compassion.

"Although his parents' wills show that Mr Downes stood to gain substantial benefit upon the death of his parents, there is no evidence to indicate that he was motivated by this prospect."

The prosecution service decided that the son had provided only minor assistance. His solicitor informed the police of the suicides and co-operated fully with them.

The CPS also decided that the couple's younger child, Boudicca, 39, had not undertaken any act in England or Wales that would have assisted them.

The deaths of Sir Edward, 85, who had conducted the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Royal Opera House for many years, and his wife, 74, was one of the most high-profile recent cases of British suicides at the Dignitas clinic. Sir Edward was almost blind and increasingly deaf and Lady Downes, a former ballet dancer, had terminal cancer.

In a statement issued at the time, Caractacus and Boudicca Downes said: "After 54 happy years together they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems. They died peacefully and under circumstances of their own choosing and with the help of the Swiss organisation Dignitas."